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TORN: The Israel-Palestine Poster War on NYC Streets Courtesy of Hemdale Films In the weeks and months following the Hamas-led terror attack against southern Israel on October 7, 2023, it was nearly impossible to avoid social media footage of people across the United States tearing down posters of the 251 individuals, including a nine-month-old child, who had been taken hostage into the Gaza Strip. Those confronted on-camera provided a myriad of reasons (and non-reasons) for their actions, whether it was labeling the fliers as “Zionist propaganda,” making the claim that such posters were only exacerbating the war, or simply remaining silent. This snowballing controversy over seemingly simple pieces of paper launched endless online arguments, dominated the news cycle, and gradually began to serve as a microcosm of the fathomless ideological rift among Americans, many of whom view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a zero sum game. Just like the posters themselves, the fabric of a society once based on respectful, nuanced disagreement was being ripped apart in real time. As Nim Shapira tells me over Zoom, “the posters took on a life of their own.” Heartbroken by what he was seeing, the Israeli-American filmmaker based out of New York City began to ask himself a trio of important questions: “Can several truths exist at the same time?” “Is empathy a limited resource?” “Can we sit down and speak with a person that disagrees with us?” Shapira broaches all three in his timely, powerful, and thought-provoking documentary, TORN: The Israel-Palestine Poster War on NYC Streets. “When I first started working on the project, I was sure the war was going to last a few weeks or months,” admits the writer-director, who comes from a background in advertising, VR, and interactive experiences. “It was a challenge working on a film about a war…

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Filed under: News - @ September 9, 2025 12:27 am